Lilly has launched the first in its planned series of country-level blogs, with its Canadian operations the first to start their own version of the pharma company’s corporate Lilly Pad blog.
Lilly Pad Canada continues the company’s blogging focus on corporate responsibility, public policy and life at Lilly, and is being authored by France Dubé, a 12-year veteran of Lilly Canada who leads its provincial affairs team.
“As the first official ‘blogger’ for LillyPad Canada, I will offer our opinions and perspectives on relevant health policy topics and issues in the news. As a Canadian, I’m excited to establish a dialogue on the important health policy issues that affect each of us and encourage you to join the conversation,” she said in a post to the blog.
Lilly launched its US-run corporate Lilly Pad blog in October 2010, and in March announced plans for some of its affiliates in other countries to set up their own versions of the blog.
Lilly Pad Canada takes a dual language approach, with posts viewable in either English or French, and coinciding with the blog’s launch Lilly’s Canadian operations have also joined Twitter.
Blogging, one of the most time consuming areas of social media, seems to be having something of a resurgence in pharma – this is Lilly’s second blog launch this year after its Clinical Open Innovation team began blogging in March.
Other new pharma blogs on the horizon include Boehringer Ingelheim’s The Future Just Happened. Talking to PMLiVE in January about Boehringer’s blog plans the company’s director of digital John Pugh said he was looking to work with a range of guest bloggers, including patients.
The number of pharma company blogs has slowly increased since Johnson & Johnson launched the industry’s first, JnJ BTW, in 2007. Now seven of the top ten pharma companies run their own blogs, including GSK, AstraZeneca and Sanofi (full details in the Digital Handbook’s Pharma social media directory).
